


Petals

by jinkazama



Category: Tekken
Genre: F/M, Robot/Human Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 19:39:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5103260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jinkazama/pseuds/jinkazama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"'Round the corner, back of hands they'll still be talking whether or not we'd ever..."<br/>After the events of Tekken 6, Lars is left with Alisa and a heap of conflicted emotions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Petals

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hayyie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hayyie/gifts).



> Warning: severely cheesy. Sorry not sorry.
> 
> Written as a gift for a dear friend. I hope you like it.
> 
> Had never written Lars/Alisa before. I really enjoyed writing this, but found it difficult at times. Their relationship is so interesting to think about, and once I started thinking about all the possible issues, I found it hard to stop.
> 
> Before actually writing anything, I had intended to write a lighter piece. This...is not that. Written after rewatching the Scenario Campaign cutscenes, which are quite melancholy in places.

The pink petals drifted down in spirals, and Alisa caught them in the folds of her dress.

Lars watched her, and smiled. Ahead of him, the queue for the ATM was distressingly static, but he could watch Alisa sitting on the bench all day. She’d attracted a bit of attention, with her bright pink hair and flashy dress, but she didn’t notice.

What was she thinking of? Lars couldn’t even begin to consider how a mind like hers worked – especially as it wasn’t a mind like his own. Was she cataloguing those blossoms, recording the moment for eternity? Could androids have memories? Did they dream?

Alisa had been made, not born, but Lars wondered; was it that that was bothering him?

His thoughts were broken by the abrupt shove he got from someone behind him; the machine was free. Lars ignored both the muttered curse and Alisa’s head flashing up as she registered the incident. He prayed she wouldn’t whip out her wings, or worse, the chainsaws. His size made the pusher hesitant to take it further; the man grumbled darkly but said no more. Lars strode up to the machine and whipped out his card.

Moments later, he had a wad of yen and Alisa was already rising to meet him as he approached her.

“Did you get what you needed, Lars?”

“Yes, now it’s time to get what _you_ need.”              

Alisa had been disconnected from the Mishima Zaibatsu and was off their network, and, thanks to Lee, out of their programming. She’d been accompanying Lars on short trips. But she’d seemed distant, and when Lars asked her about it, all she would say was that while her programming links had been cut, she was still wearing clothes that had been designed by the Zaibatsu. She was still wearing things made by her old master.

Perhaps the question of memory wasn’t so irrelevant after all.

Lars didn’t even know how to approach Alisa’s problem, but he figured it was best to start small and work up. Clothes were easy. Maybe getting rid of the clothes Jin had given her would help Alisa.

He watched Alisa examine a dress in a nearby shop window, and thought about what Lee had told him.

“She models her speech and mannerisms according to her companions,” Lee had said, as he’d looked up from a screen filled with indecipherable code.

“She does?” Lars had suspected as much, but to hear it confirmed…

“Yes. So when she was guarding Jin, she had those haughty commands and cold tones – that’s not her being a robot, that’s her mimicking Jin. Whereas when we were in the lab, she was mimicking my speech patterns, even my accent.” Lee smirked.

“I learned Japanese from Heihachi, and his dialect is rather…different from Jin’s, so it was easy to notice. But even you must have picked up on it?”

Lars thought about it.

“I think,” he began, “she was talking to me in shorter sentences. Less formality. I thought I noticed that. But –“

Lee watched him inquiringly.

“Isn’t that…strange? That she does that?”

“Not really,” Lee said smoothly. “Humans do it all the time. Do you think I speak the same way to you and to Kazuya? Bosconovitch was a genius.”

Lars had had nothing to say to that. He brooded over the matter as they strolled through a park with a duck pond.

Lee’s report had been simplified for him, as robotics was not an area he had much expertise in, but he remembered select fragments. The final passage was emblazoned across his thoughts, as bold as ink on parchment.

“Most of all, Alisa was designed to obey, but that does not preclude her from adapting once her links to the Zaibatsu have been severed. Based on the level of sophistication at work here, I would not be surprised to see her go off-programme. Choose for herself. Take her with you, and see what she does. Report back.”

Lars wasn’t stupid enough to think this was pure altruism from Lee. But he knew enough to thank him for his work and his insight.

“Lars?”

Alias was looking at him inquiringly. He snapped out of his daze.

“Sorry, I was just thinking about something that happened.”

“Did you get more of your memories back?” Alisa looked so intrigued that Lars felt bad for his daydreaming.

“No, nothing like that. Just…thinking.”

“Your pulse is elevated,” Alisa noted, with some concern. “I do not wish to proceed if you are feeling unwell.”

Lars smiled. “It’s nothing like that. Did you see anything you like?”

“Yes,” Alisa said gravely. “There is a pink dress inside with a pattern of cherry blossoms.”

Cherry blossoms? Lars thought of Alisa gathering them in her lap.

“Lars, your blood pressure has risen,” Alisa noted.

“I’m fine. Let’s go in.”

The dress was pink, and covered in cherry blossoms. Lars didn’t know much about women’s clothing, but it was a pretty pattern, even if the price made his eyes water. Alisa took it from the rack and began examining it with her hands methodically.

“The material is soft but very strong. It has been treated to resist rain. I think it will be hardwearing and durable.”

“Yes, but forget that. Do you like it?” Lars asked.

Alisa met his eyes directly. “I think that it is very pretty.” She was tracing the petals of the flowers with her finger. Lars wondered what she was thinking, what her eyes were seeing.

“You can have it if you like this one,” Lars said, “but I want you to choose it for yourself. Don’t worry about what I think.”

He recalled Alisa catching the cherry blossoms in her lap, smiling as she reached to pluck one from the air, twisting a delicate stem behind her ear. Was this what Lee had meant? That she could mimic, due to the sophistication of her programming?

Alisa surprised him by taking his hand in hers.

He’d never touched it before. Soft smooth surface. Warm. As you’d expect from looking at her hand, if you didn’t know.

The last time they’d held hands, it had been through gloves. Jin had mocked his pain as he looked on. Alisa looked at him strangely as though she was going to ask about his heart rate. Lars was grateful she didn’t. He cast his eyes down, tried to compose himself.

“It is said,” she began, “that cherry blossoms represent the brevity of life.”

“Meaning?”

“The flowers have a brief life, and we enjoy them in their beauty, because it lasts only a short time. “

“People look at the flowers and think of themselves,” Lars replied. He was never much for metaphors. Alisa smiled again. Her fingers curled against the back of his hand.

“That is not how I would have put it but you understand.”

His heart lifted. Not a mimic at all. Not where it mattered. Last time they’d held hands, she’d thanked him for treating her like a person.

Alisa let go of his hand and led him to the back of the shop, where she pointed out a cobalt-blue dress. It hung beautifully on her, but which clashed with her pink hair jarringly, as Lars pointed out.

“Does it matter?” Alisa said. Lars raised his eyebrow at the amusingly Lee-like retort, but it was off-script. He liked that. “It makes me think of water. Xiaoyu told me about the Poyang Lake in China. She said that you can sit on a boat in the middle of the lake and not see land. She told me about the cranes that gather there for winter. She said there would be more than could ever be counted.”

She paused, looking at him almost hesitantly.

“I would like to go there one day, to see for myself. To see the water, to count the cranes. I am sure that I could count them.”

Lars took it in.

He was about to ask why she wanted to go there, but reconsidered. If she was a human would he ask? Or would he take the wish in good faith?

“Maybe one day,” he said, looking deep into her eyes, her all-too-human eyes.

He paid for the dresses and watched as the clerk folded them up, handing the bag straight to Alisa, who was dancing about joyously. The clerk was looking at her with a bemused expression. He didn’t suspect.

Why would he?

He thought back to Alisa obeying Jin; rebooting and attacking him with eyes that blazed red instead of the sweet green he’d become accustomed to. Was it that?

It couldn’t have been. After all, Alisa had been obeying Jin’s commands, just as she was supposed to. She hadn’t done it of her own free will. Lars and forgiven her…and Jin too, in the end. He wasn’t Kazuya, to sit and stew on ancient grudges.

Lee had told him to find the answer for himself. But Lars thought he knew already.

He’d been born into a family of monsters. Kazuya and Jin weren’t wholly human, and Heihachi was the biggest demon of all. How could Lars look at someone so warm, so sweet, so full of life, and consider her not human enough?

That was the question he had been tormenting himself with since they’d left Lee’s lab. He realised, then, that Lee had given him the same answer he’d come to by his own experiences. He wanted to explore with Alisa, to see the world and to watch how she changed as they went.

It was time to look to those who cared for him, and to stop dwelling so much on the past.

He smiled, and took Alisa’s hand in his as they walked out together.

 


End file.
